Don't Look Down
by AgentEquus
Summary: Clint tries flirting with Nat, which ends... interestingly. A mission goes south and leaves Natasha with a fear of heights, which leads to complications on another mission. Summary is horrible.


**Written for my freakin' amazing friend Squabin, who puts up with my insane fangirling every day at lunch. Merry Christmas!**

**Disclaimer: Don't own, never did, never will.**

"So Nat… what would you do to a guy who, say… tried to kiss you?" Clint Barton asked cheekily as he ducked a roundhouse kick from his red-haired partner. If there was one good thing about living with Tony Stark, it was definitely the rooms he had specially designed for the master assassins. Both were well-equipped with targets, mats, and pretty much every lethal weapon known to mankind.

"Well…" Natasha pretended to stop and think for a moment. "Probably break their nose." Moving so quickly her hands were a blur, she snapped Clint's hand into a kodagesh and twisted hard. His knees buckled with the pain and he rolled to the floor. Before he could get his bearings, she had his arm in an arm bar and he was in considerable pain. Clint let out an incredibly articulate "Mmph", his face currently being ground into the mat they were sparring on. The archer then simply gritted his teeth, started doing multiplication problems in his head, and swung his legs around, effectively taking out Natasha's knees. He watched with a glimmer of satisfaction as she fell rather gracelessly onto the mat next to him.

"That was _low_, Barton," she muttered.

"And using your ninja skills on me isn't?"

"Touché."

"But what if someone kissed you when you weren't expecting it?" He pushed himself up so that he was sitting cross-legged on the mat and stared into her eyes. He was asking a legitimate question, she could see it in his eyes. She rolled her eyes.

"Please Barton, I can't be taken by surprise. It's simply not possible," Nat scoffed. She pulled herself up off the ground and strode over to her water bottle, which was currently resting upon a pile of folded blue mats.

"Don't be so sure…" he mumbled, and followed her. "You know I'm going to have bruises now, no?" She shrugged nonchalantly.

"They fade," she replied.

"Agents Barton and Romanoff, there's a call waiting for you upstairs from Director Fury." A cool British voice coming from the ceiling made both of them jump a little. Despite hearing JARVIS every day for the last two months, he still managed to surprise both of them- it's hard to adjust to hearing a voice coming from God-knows-where at any hour of the day or night.

"Thanks, JARVIS," Natasha replied, grabbing her water bottle. "Can you tell him we'll be right up?"

"It would be my pleasure, Ms. Romanoff," the AI replied. Clint glanced at Natasha.

"The vents?"

"The vents," she agreed.

-linebreak-

Nobody knew exactly what happened on the mission they had been sent on. Fury had refused to tell them anything, and Hill was silent as the grave. All they knew was that somewhere along the line they had gotten seriously screwy intel and the mission had been severely compromised. The two had returned home with distanced eyes and a haunted look about them. Natasha had been leaning on Clint more than she would've liked to admit. The two had withdrawn to their rooms and no one saw them for another two days. When they finally emerged, some of the shadows had left Clint's eyes and Natasha's face had lost its haunted look. Five days after that, Clint, eyes drawn, told them what had happened during the last twenty-four hours of their mission.

The building they had infiltrated had caught fire. An internationally infamous terrorist and arms dealer had somehow, somewhere found out who they were. And rather than capture and torture the duo, he had decided it would be easier to simply put an end to them. So he put a match on a pile of gunpowder and a bullet in his brain. The building, being in a horrible part of town and lacking structural integrity, had quickly been consumed. The assassins had been trapped on the top floor of the building with a handful of the arms dealer's guards. They thought they had killed all of them and ran for the window. The smoke had been getting chokingly thick as the two dived for the fire escape next door. Then the unthinkable happened: Natasha got shot.

One of the guards, despite bullets in his shoulder and sternum, managed to get off one final shot from his Galil. It tore through Natasha's calf in mid-takeoff, making her lose her footing on the sill and fall fifteen feet to the ground. She was alive because of some unfortunate person's laundry, strung out across the alley. She had grabbed the rough cord of the line and swung down, slamming into the side of the stuccoed building and rolling into the ground. Clint had flown down the fire escape and picked up the red-haired assassin as gingerly as he could. From there he fled to a safe house, where they spent a hellish twelve hours waiting for extraction.

All in all, Natasha had cracked three ribs, lacerated her forehead, had a bullet removed from her calf, and sustained severe rope burns from the clothesline, plus the smoke inhalation. Clint had gotten away with minor cuts and little damage from the smoke.

"She's going to be terrified of heights now," he ended, looking around at his fellow Avengers and Pepper, all looking horrified. "Nobody takes a fall like that and walks away unscathed."

-linebreak-

"Widow, come on, we have to get out of here!" Hawkeye tore around the corner of a supposedly-deserted office building. Dammit, why did every hallway have to look exactly the same? It had been the rumored hideout of a well-known drug lord, whose recent shipments of whatever the hell he was selling were starting to get onto SHIELD's radar big time. _There are too many smart bad guys these days_, he decided. Just two minutes ago, Cap had discovered a bomb nestled in the center of the building, set to blow in twenty seconds. He had disarmed it… which, in turn, armed the other bombs in the building. They knew there were at least twenty-four: one bomb per wall per floor. They all had a timer set for five minutes. With only three minutes remaining, he had to find the Widow and get out. Cap, the Hulk, and Iron Man were already safely outside. Natasha, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found.

"Hawkeye, where are you?" he heard through his com. Nat sounded out of breath at best.

"Third floor heading east, you?" He didn't have time to respond. A red-haired blur careened around a corner and crashed into him. "Guess I found you." Without further ado, he grabbed her hand and started sprinting towards what he hoped was a wall with a window. _Left, right, two more lefts… there!_ Clint pulled out an explosive arrow and sent it through a pane, which blew out on contact. He nocked a grappling arrow and was about to release the string when he noticed Natasha next to him, staring at the ground. "Nat, come on!"

"I can't," she said, staring blankly down at the ground thirty feet below. "I can't."

"You have to jump! This place is going sky high in a minute and a half, we need to get out."

"Clint… I just can't." Her voice cracked. She looked away from him. _A minute left._

"Hey… look at me." When she didn't, he reached out and touched her face. Almost unwillingly, she turned to look at him. He re-nocked the grappling arrow and let it fly without ever looking at it.

And then he leaned down and kissed her. It was slow, gentle, and light and completely caught her off-guard. Clint broke the kiss, stepping away a minute amount and looking down at her.

"Surprised ya," he whispered, then grabbed her around the waist and jumped. Life slowed down as the building behind them exploded. Clint shielded Natasha as best he could from the flying shrapnel and gritted his teeth as he felt bits of glass embed itself in his back. It had been happening a lot more often than he would've liked.

**So how was it? Hate it, love it, want to flush it down the toilet and never want to see it again? I don't write stuff like this very often xD Feedback is muchly appreciated! Thanks!**

**~AE **


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